Assessing Alternative Financing Methods for the Canadian Health Care System in View of Population Aging

Doug Andrews

Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers from McMaster University

Abstract: The cost of the Canadian health care system is approximately 10% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Survey-evidence suggests that Canadians do not wish to have additional funds spent on health care but believe that the system should be able to deliver better quality care. Due to low fertility rates and increasing life expectancy, the Canadian population is aging. Over the next 25 years, the dependency ratio will increase, primarily due to the aging of the “baby boom generation” 2. This will place twofold cost pressures on governments responsible for maintaining the health care system: 1) As a consequence of increased life expectancy, on average, Canadians will have a longer period of health care consumption. Although age-specific cost may not increase, with an aging population aggregate annual health care expenditures are expected to increase. 2) The dependency ratio is a proxy for the ability of the population to support itself. The increasing dependency rate may result in a slowdown in GDP growth, given constant technology. In Section I, this paper attempts to quantify these factors. A single measure combining cost and quality is developed to demonstrate the magnitude of the challenge. In Section II, this paper examines a number of different approaches to health care financing including user fees and alternative compensation methods for physicians. The paper highlights documented information from Canada and international experience on the implementation issues involved. The paper evaluates the desirability of implementing these approaches in Canada.

Keywords: Alternative physician reimbursement models; Capitation; DALE; Disability Adjusted Life Expectancy; QAHE; Quality-Adjusted Health Expenditures; QAHE Index; SID; Supplier-Induced Demand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2007-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-hea
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/sedap/p/sedap224.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/sedap/p/sedap224.pdf [302 Moved Temporarily]--> https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/sedap/p/sedap224.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mcm:sedapp:224

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers from McMaster University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().